Computing systems are useful for managing data entities, i.e., records which represent entities, such as users, groups, computers, software systems. It is often desired to view or manipulate these entities in some manner. Procedural requests are used to cause such manipulation of entities. The use of computing systems for managing data entities in secure, mission critical and compliance sensitive environments has become prevalent. In such environments, it is desirable to cause certain processes to occur in response to specific requests for the manipulation, or even viewing, of data entities. For example, when a new employee desires to join an e-mail distribution list, the employee's identity may need to be verified, the person or entity owning the desired distribution list may need to approve of the addition, and the employee may expect to receive notification once such action has taken place. Having each of these steps occur requires the execution of several processes. Further, if the employee is indeed added to the distribution list, the system administrator may desire to cause other processes to run, such as to move the entire distribution list to a different distribution list if the size of the original list has exceeded a maximum number as a result of the addition of the new employee. Manual determination and execution of such processes by a system administrator is inefficient and may not be feasible at all in large organizations with multiple parties making multiple requests. Further, requiring a system administrator to create new programming code for each possible manipulation is also not realistic given the plethora of possible request combinations. The problem is exacerbated when a system administrator is responsible for data entity management of multiple related organizations or when compliance with intensive security requirements is required at multiple levels. The problem may be further exacerbated if the entities in and of themselves are not organized for processing.
Although specific problems have been addressed in this Background, this disclosure is not intended in any way to be limited to solving those specific problems.